Elves are the second most recent arrivals in Berla. Long ago, they traveled in a single enormous fleet of seafaring vessels called Narleth, and survived off of trade, raiding, and the bounty of the ocean. An elf's lot was to be raucous, proud, and daring for as long as the sun, the moon, and the stars kept you from the Sea Mother's maw. This state of affairs had been the way of their world for so long that any cultural memory of a time when home was a fixed place faded into myth, replaced by a whirlwind of existence as the ships passing in the night. Modern elvish folklore remains a rich tapestry bursting with far-fetched peoples, places, and things, all strange and implausible relics from their ancestors' time skimming the great deep. Social structure in those days revolved around crew and communication, power scaling with how many people one was responsible for mobilizing, and Narleth's individual vessels often squabbled among themselves when they weren't on a migration path. The highest authority came from the venerated wavesingers, oracles that discerned when all of Narleth should move and where to, as well as bearing the responsibility of settling any disputes that might draw the attention of the Sea Mother.
Eventually, the tides turned against the elves. The dreaded day of the ocean's wrath came, and an endless, pitiless storm struck, forcing Narleth out into open sea and chasing so closely that there was no choice but to flee, borne on the swell of water and wind the howling ocean sent. On and on the pursuit drew, the distance closing. Fatigue, mistakes, and sheer overwhelming natural force picked off the slowest vessels a few at a time. At last, a coastline came into view, and Narleth threw itself into the bay in a last desperate scramble, riding the saltwater surge far inland. The Sea Mother's storm was fed by her, and the elves had finally outrun it long enough to find shelter and to weather its weakened force.
In the quiet that followed, the majority of Narleth's survivors agreed that this ordeal had been a sign that the winds had changed forever. It was a warning to never return. This conviction only deepened when several groups waved off this superstitious nonsense, made their way back downstream, and returned some time later with barely a third of their numbers intact. Small wonder that nowadays, elves refuse sea travel unless the coastline remains firmly in view.
Without the looming presence of the great deep, the wavesinger oracles and the cult of the Sea Mother faded into obscurity as just another part of elvish folklore. Water remained a vital part of life. Any elvish community of respectable size is at least partially amphibious, utilizing canals and watercraft as transportation, and the highest concentration of elves remains within the river delta and surrounding wetlands. As they adapted to their new environment, they began to supplement traditional fishing and trapping practices with the adoption of hunting, and thanks to the fertility of the delta, with rudimentary agriculture. Life did not become truly comfortable for the elves until their penchant for exploration brought them within contact range of the dwarves and Kith, who (after an adjustment period to the erratic wanderers), began offering assistance and knowledge that would encourage them to relax and maybe stop raiding everyone within reach quite so often.
The elves were shaken considerably by the banishment from the domain of their former mother goddess, and found kinship with the dwarves in that regard, but the adoption of the Mountain pantheon was only ever temporary. A guardian had rejected them once before, and they were wary of a repeat. In time, a single deity emerged, taking on new meaning from her origins as the Starmaid who aided the wavesingers in charting their paths through storm and surge. The elves re-iconized her as a tri-natured goddess whose domains included the three phases of their history, the three seasons in their new home, the three harvests each season provided, the three branches of the river itself. She was reborn as Inaala, or simply Ina- an older sister, a companion, a reflection in the water.
Description: You have a natural connection to the arcane. You gain 1 extra rune.
Description: You have strong natural regenerative abilities. When you Rest, you can choose to heal 1 limb wound instead of regaining 1 hit.
Description: You can wield a bow regardless of your class restrictions.
Description: Your age has given you wisdom. You have -1 hit, but +2 runes.
Description: Either your advancing age, or all consuming focus on the arcane has left your body frail, but given you access to additional runic energy. You have -2 hits, but +4 runes.
Description: You may add an extra 10 seconds to the incant time of any spell to decrease its rune cost by 1. You cannot lower a spell's cost below 1 rune with this ability. You can only use this ability once per cast of a spell.
Description: When you regain a rune through resting, you regain 2 instead.